You can pull all the stops out…

Who decides which artists become the subject of newspaper features? Given that the choices appear to be limitless, why X instead of Y, and shouldn’t the writer articulate the reason for the pick?

Twice recently Tyler Green asked this question (here and here), after narrative woodworker Alison Elizabeth Taylor popped up in both The New York Times (here) and the Washington Post (here).

Green’s not asking about reviews. He’s asking about human interest stories with an art angle. What is it about this particular human — Alison Elizabeth Taylor — that inspires press to scribble in a notebook and arrange for a photo shoot? Green knows the answers but, idealist that he is, must be hoping they aren’t true. They are. Always. One size fits all. Every feature story in the mainstream press about an unknown artist scores in at least one of these categories.

1. The artist is a member of the target audience. Although older white men run the country (and newspapers), the target audience is young (18-40) and/or female: Young because older people tend to die off, leaving those born after to pick up the paper or click to the online site, and women because studies say they make the most consumer choices. If a newspaper attracts more men than women, its audience is worth less to the people who place ads. Remember that editorial can’t pander to advertising. Journalists get all high horse about that, even though subtle pandering is the norm but never phrased as pandering.

2. The artist has a gimmick. Tom Fruin makes quilts from drug baggies. He’s good, but that’s not the point. All he has to be is plausible. The baggies sell him, and that’s why he popped up everywhere until he made them no longer and is of interest just to people who care about art. No more feature stories for him.

I recently scored the front page above the fold with a feature about a woman (see No. 1) who created a story collage that runs virally on cell phones. (Cell phone art: see No. 2). Geoff Edgers found himself writing for The Boston Globe’s front page because Kurt Kauper paints Boston sports stars in the nude. What if Kauper had painted bowls of fruit? Absolutely no feature potential there. He’d be lucky to get a couple of inches inside the arts section, no photo.

Extra points go to artists if they or their subjects are glam. Back to Alison Elizabeth Taylor, which is, by the way, a great name for an artist. She’s female, young, got a gimmick and is lovely, which is why everybody runs her picture. If she weren’t spotlighted in the nation’s top newspapers, she’d have every reason to complain.

(posted by potatoscone, from “Gypsy.”)

While on the subject of arts writing in newspapers, I believe — and correct me if I’m wrong — that only one alternative paper in the country employs an art critic full time. Which one? Answer here. Thank you, Dan Savage.